rezoning

Protesters with the group Movement for Justice in El Barrio hold signs protesting the mayor’s plan to rezone East Harlem. The plan will allow new developments to begin construction in the neighborhood. Photo by Kristen Torres.

Protesters gathered outside an East Harlem town hall meeting last night to push back against Mayor Bill De Blasio’s plan to rezone some sections of the neighborhood.

They held up signs that said things like “East Harlem is not for sale,” and “Say no to racist rezoning.”

Salome Leon was one of the protesters. She’s part of a group called Movement for Justice in El Barrio, which aims to stop gentrification in the neighborhood.

“We’re here because what De Blasio is saying is a lie,” Leon said. “He keeps saying rent won’t go up with these new developments, but they will, and we won’t be able to afford it anymore.”

Leon said she’s lived in the area for the last 19 years. She raised her children just down the street from the Johnson Community Center, where the town hall meeting took place.

“De Blasio keeps using the affordable housing mandate as an excuse for these buildings being built. But the landlords aren’t complying,” Leon said. “We want him to ditch the rezoning plan. It doesn’t help the people who live here.”

The East New York Neighborhood Plan was announced by the mayor’s office in 2015, and is meant to create 1,500 new affordable housing units in the borough, according to De Blasio.

Contrary to what Leon and her fellow protesters claim, De Blasio said the rezoning would actually help more people get out of shelters and into permanent housing.

“When this is all over, we’ll have four thousand, five thousand people into new homes,” he said.

Last year, the city council passed the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing bill, which forces developers in certain areas to make at least 20 percent of a building’s units affordable housing units.

Ethel Velez is president of the New York City Housing Authority’s Manhattan North Council of Presidents.

She pushed back against the mayor at the meeting, asking why so much money was going into building new affordable housing, while the existing units were falling into disrepair.

“Public housing is the only low income housing option that we know of,” Velez said. “If we’re going to talk about preserving public housing, then we need money, too.”

Some residents also pushed De Blasio about his motives for the rezoning, claiming he was giving out development contracts to campaign contributors.

“I have spent plenty of time in the last four years taking on landlords and developers,” De Blasio said to the town hall participants. “I’ve done a lot that goes against any interest of the real estate industry. So you might disagree with me on the vision, but don’t look for a motive that isn’t there.”

De Blasio also said current affordable housing buildings will never be switched over to private companies — a concern that many Harlem locals brought up over the course of the two hours.

“East Harlem has the highest amount of affordable housing units in the country,” De Blasio said. “If we don’t keep investing in new affordable housing, though, a huge number of people won’t be able to continue living in the city.”

New York City mayor Bill De Blasio addresses questions about the plan to rezone East Harlem during last night’s town hall meeting. Photo by Kristen Torres

The rezoning plan says the city will rush the construction of 1,200 new public and private affordable housing units over the next two years in the neighborhood.

It rezoned certain areas of East Harlem to allow construction of mixed use buildings, meaning developers can have storefronts on the ground level, and housing units on the upper floors.

“Look, I get it. There’s a lot of bad connotation when it comes to saying anything we do is privatized,” De Blasio said. “But everyone is going to keep what they already have. We’re just taking the opportunity to develop new units.”

The New York City Department of City Planning’s model of the proposed rezoned Bay Street Corridor. The buildings on the left are intended to be taller-scale residential units with a percentage of units set aside for affordable housing. Photo by Dale Isip

Wearing glasses and a fitted cap, Ephraim Diggs sat relaxed at a table in a busy Staten Island presentation hall waiting to hear about the rezoning plans that would bring big changes to his borough.

“There is a billion dollars worth of public and private investment coming to this neighborhood now,” said Len Garcia-Duran, director of DCP’s Staten Island office, “We’ve got an opportunity for new residential within walking distances of the ferry terminal in downtown Manhattan, that would attract a lot of folks who are being priced out of Manhattan.”

The area extends from Victory Boulevard in Tompkinsville to Sands Street in Stapleton. The area has a significant width, as it spans between Bay Street and Van Duzer Streets, two thoroughfares on Staten Island’s North Shore. It is currently a manufacturing district, and has been since 1961. City agencies including the DCP and the NYCEDC have held several meetings with the public in regards to proposed changes to the area’s development zone status.

“In Williamsburg and other areas, they all have affordable housing components voluntarily,” said Garcia-Duran. “What we’re trying to do is demonstrate how we can get new private development done here on Staten Island, with a required affordable housing component.”

“The Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning is now held up as what not to do, how not to rezone a community.” said Jens Rasmussen, a community activist and resident of Greenpoint. “If the rezoning is anything like what’s happened here, it will irrevocably change the character of your neighborhood.”

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Mandatory Inclusionary Housing plan, developers building in rezoned areas would be required to set aside a certain percentage of new units for affordable housing. Because of a community-level resistance to high-density developments, the plan has been rejected at the borough board level on Staten Island. It is also currently facing opposition in the New York City Council for similar, though not entirely identical reasons.

The rezoning phenomenon is currently city-wide, to accommodate for Mayor de Blasio’s proposed 200,000 units of affordable housing. The recent rezoning of East Harlem, for example, is indicative of a process that took months to accomplish.

Back in Staten Island, some residents fear development will affect rent and the nature of businesses in the area.

“At the moment [the Bay Street Corridor] is underutilized, so I think it would be nice to see that strip be more active,” said DB Lampman, artist and co-founder of Staten Island MakerSpace in Stapleton. “We just don’t want to see all the manufacturing being lost.”

In conjunction with projects such as the currently developing New York Wheel and Urby Staten Island, other residents saw the potential for traffic and population density issues along a rezoned Bay Street Corridor.

“I live over there by the ferris wheel – they’re renovating our lot, and they’re renovating the ferry,” said Diggs, a St. George resident. “There’s a lot of building going on. I understand what they are trying to do, to build and upgrade, but in the long run there is going to be overcrowding.”

Some residents don’t want to see this happen on Staten Island.

“I think this Mayor wants more affordable housing,” said Ed Pollio, co-founder of the 5050 Skatepark in Stapleton. “My concern is, if he’s reelected, is he going to push this through without community support? … I don’t think Staten Island is ready for what’s going to happen on the North Shore.”